How is pitcher "effectiveness" best measured?

[Six11 Hitting]

What would be a good WHIP and ERA for a 16U travel ball "A" pitcher?

I like the Batting average against stat also. It is a good way to judge how well the opposing batters are hitting against your pitcher...

 

[Phathead]

What fastpitch 26 said is what I try to take into consideration with the stats. If I have three pitchers with near to exact stats, I'm going to look back at the day or last tourny and evaluate what I observed. I will pitch the championship game with who I feel like give me more easy balls to field and less likely have balls rattling the fence. This is why coaches get chewed out by parents sometimes, there isn't always a number to assign to a decision.

 

[RubberBiscuit]

So your opinion is, K pitchers are always the most effective pitchers?

Yes ................

 

[sluggers]

Strikeouts are the. But, realistically, getting strikeouts against good competition is very difficult. Good hitters don't strike out much. E.g., in the CWS championship series there were a total of 13 strikeouts over two games.

Some pitchers are really "one trick ponies". They might have one good pitch, and when people start hitting it, they don't have the ability to adapt during a game.

When the other team is hitting the pitcher, she has to change the location and speed of her pitches. But, most of the kids can't do it.

There are two people at fault:

1) The PC who fails to force the kid to really learn a breaking pitch.
2) The team coach who never teaches (most likely because he doesn't know) how to call pitch location. (E.g., the team coaches call for an inside fastball. Great...exactly where is the inside fastball supposed to be? On the plate? off the plate?)

 

[Scorekeeper]

WHIP is highly correlated with runs allowed. A pitcher's job is to prevent runs. Inherent in that is preventing base runners and getting batters to make outs, which is basically what WHIP is. A pitcher's ERA is not as 'trustworthy', IMO, as a batter's OPS, for example, because luck can play a larger factor in ERA. WHIP provides a check and balance to ERA.

If runs is what’s most important, and I agree that it is, why not just look at the rate a pitcher allows runs expressed as either innings per run, pitches per run, batters per run, or some other rate expression rather than a metric that doesn’t have runs in it as a factor? I do an OPS for both pitchers and hitters, so why not use an opponent’s OPS?

Another issue is that you didn't define effectiveness. Are you asking for a bottom-line 'how many runs did you allow' or 'how well did you pitch?' ... Which is more effective - A pitcher who allows 2 runs and 2 hits, or one that allows 1 run on 10 hits? Which pitched better?

I didn’t define it, but I did show what direction I leaned with a report having several metrics on it, the ones I feel are best are pitches per out, runner, and run.

Don't have one.

Well, it’s nice to meet an honest man. 

I suspect you don’t have one for the same reason no one else does. Its freakin’ hard to do!

 

[Scorekeeper]

Rocketech1,

I have little trouble with any of those things, other than W/L record, but that’s way too complicated a process for most people. That’s why I asked what the BEST stat was for effectiveness.

 

[Scorekeeper]

fastpitch26,

It looks like you’re more into QAB’s than anything else. That’s OK, but how does someone who wasn’t at the game know all those details you listed?

 

[Scorekeeper]

Very good points right here and I think there are plenty of coaches out there that overlook this in regards to pitchers. Throw an error in the mix and all the sudden P1 doesn't look good at all but that's just not the case!

Another QAB fan I see. How are those things objectively measured?

 

[Scorekeeper]

True, but it's nowhere near that variance that a school team or travel team might see. Plus, MLB uses a 5-man rotation, so it's too random to have a huge SOS difference over 30 starters. Not saying you might not discover some interesting things by researching the quality of batters faced, but nowhere near as significant as you might see in lower levels.

Well, I certainly can’t argue one way or the other because as far as I know, no one has the ability to make the differentiation, or the data with which to do it if they had the ability.

 

[Scorekeeper]

The difference between the best MLB team (#1) and worst MLB team (#30) is negligible compared to the difference between the best (travel ball team) and the 30th best travel ball team. The variance in quality of opponent in a youth sport setting whether it be Travel Ball A/B/C, Rec ball, High School Ball, Middle School ball simply can't be compared to MLB in any meaningful sense.

You really believe the top 30 travel ball teams is the country have a huge variance from top to bottom? All I can say is, at one time last season were in the top 100 in the country, and we played 3 other teams in the top 100. The differences were miniscule from top to bottom. But maybe its different in SB.